The present invention relates to an interior structure of a vehicle which comprises a side airbag.
Conventionally, a large-sized impact absorbing member to absorb an impact load at a vehicle side crash is provided at the side door of the vehicle.
For example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 2000-16208 discloses the interior structure of a vehicle, in which the article storage portion is provided at the side door and the impact absorbing member is disposed at the upper edge of this article storage portion. In this case, a sufficiently-large article storage portion of the side door may not be ensured, so that there is a restriction in a vehicle layout.
Further, according to the interior structure of a vehicle disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 2003-118368, the side airbag device is provided at the seat so that it can be prevented that the side airbag device interferes with the side wall of the door pocket at the inflation of the airbag.
In these days, the side airbag device which covers even a waist portion of a passenger has been developed. Herein, it has been also tried to enlarge the size of a vehicle-equipment portion provided at the door, such as a door pocket. However, there is a concern that the airbag inflating at the vehicle side crash may come into an upper portion of the pocket, so that the inflation of the airbag would become so unstable that the passenger could not be properly prevented from moving toward the vehicle outside.
Meanwhile, Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 2006-88899 discloses the interior structure of a vehicle which comprises the seatbelt which is equipped with the air belt at its lap belt portion. Herein, even if this seatbelt with the air belt is additionally applied, the air belt and the side airbag may perform their functions of protecting the passenger merely independently, so that the prevention of the position of the passenger seated toward the vehicle outside could not be achieved sufficiently. While WO2002/100691 A1 also discloses the structure equipped with the side airbag, this structure may not solve the above-describe concern either.